There's no denying that it's a great time to be a gamer. The game library for video game consoles is enormous. PC gaming is going strong even though some people predict its demise. And handheld video gaming continues to thrive. But some games never make it to stores. In fact, some never even make it out of development. In the early days of video games, it was possible for a small team or even a single person to program a game from start to finish. Today, most video games are too sophisticated and complex for a few people to design and program. Instead, video game companies dedicate entire departments to create new games.

©iStockphoto/Stephanie Phillips
Every time a video game dies, this young boy weeps.

With such a long and complex development process, there are many ways things can go wrong. Companies might go bankrupt or merge with other corporations before a game is finished. Game developers can leave the company in the middle of a project to go work somewhere else. Video game technology sometimes advances significantly during a video game's production cycle, which means the game looks dated before developers have finished making it. Sometimes developers discover that the game is difficult or even impossible to play. In these cases, companies face a tough decision: Continue developing a flawed game, or cancel the project and concentrate on something else.

VaporwareSometimes companies will announce when they cancel projects, but other times they'll remain silent about promised products that never emerge. There's a special term for products that never seem to get out of the development cycle: vaporware.

There are probably hundreds of abandoned games that most of us will never know about. These are the games that companies gave up on before announcing them to the world at large. Only the people who worked on these games -- and anyone they've talked to -- are likely to know about them. There are also dozens of games that companies promoted but that never made it into stores. This article is dedicated to those games and what could have been.

What are some of the games that should have given us hours of enjoyment but never got the chance? Keep reading to find out.

Video Gallery: Video Game MuseumWant to know about some of the best games that actually made it to shelves? Watch this Reuters video to learn about the Video Game Museum.